D&D 5E Announcement coming February 6th

[Quickleaf]

Well, I’ve seen plenty of good Ideas here, time for my impressions..

I think 2018 will play out similarly to 2017, first release will be another classic adventure rework in the vein of TfTYP

Later the main AP will drop, last year they did ‘lore you should know’ segments on Chult, Artus Cimber etc. Over the past few weeks they have covered Sigil and other plane related goodies, im expecting a planescape AP, which would be fun.

Lastly another crunch book like Volos or xanathars.


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Not to add fuel to the speculation fire but Chris Tito was wearing an interesting shirt when he presented D&D News on Jan. 16...

 

[vecna00]

Think this is what I was primarily thinking of, from early October:

John Dilley: "@JeremyECrawford [MENTION=32417]MikeM[/MENTION]earls how come wotc isn't making more 5e books akin to the Sword coast adventure guide? Lots of lore for less $"

Mearls: "We're treating our annual adventures as a chance to give world material, much like how Tomb of Annihilation covers Chult."

When asked about doing SCAG like books in the future, Mearls specifies ToA as their model moving forwards. In the Gameholecon panel, they do vaguely hint at the possibility of "genre books" that they might do for settings, to keep the material homebrew-relevant. Don't know exactly how their upcoming products will work, but SCAG seems out as a model.

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I would be ok with no more SCAG-style books, but not happy. I'm inclined to believe that world material that's included in the APs would be expansions of an existing setting, not "We're releasing Dark Sun, and all the info is in this AP! It's not much, but you'll buy it anyway!" At least that's my hope, because that would make me sad.

 

[vecna00]

Today I had a thought that's so crazy it just might be true: what if "Broadway" is an official D&D adventure path set in the world of "Stranger Things"?

A few months ago Mike Mearls made an offhand comment that's stuck with me (in a video on RollPlay with him, Koebel, Colville and Mercer). In the context of a discussion of his development process, he said something along the lines of "if I were working on a licensed product, I would ..." and then went on to explain a bit about how developing a licensed product would differ from their usual D&D development process.

At the time I though he might mean something like the "Magic: The Gathering" setting pdf's they've released. But, since that's also a WotC IP, it's not exactly "licensed," is it?

And it just so happens that one of the actual IP licenses that we know WotC has access to -- since Hasbro announced several months ago that they had purchased the tabletop gaming license for the show, and now they've already released three quickie (read: low development time) games for it (a branded Ouija, a branded Monopoly, and a dumb little "Eggo" card game) -- is filled with explicit D&D references, and arguably has contributed more to the "normalizing" and popularizing of D&D than any other non-game pop-culture phenomenon. There's just no way Hasbro would sit on that license without trying to make a D&D product out of it!

This could also explain why there are two "adventure" books coming in the fall (if indeed these are both adventure books, which I agree is not certain based on the info we have available). Because of course, if WotC is going to release an adventure book based on an IP license in the fall, they're probably also going to want to release a second adventure book the same season (Catacomb), this one set within the existing D&D cosmology.

The more I consider this, the more plausible it seems...

Now, that's some Grade AAA speculation!

To add some fuel to that fire, the book release date leak that gave us three codenamed D&D books is one thing, but at Gameholecon Mearls briefly let it drop that there would be 4 books in 2018, before trying to walk quickly past that slip: Stranger Things 5E as the mystery fourth book seems plausible to me.

Further, we know that at Gary Con Mearls will be running 5E rules versions of Gamma World and Star Frontiers, meaning they have put thought into non-Medieval settings and mechanics already. Wouldn't be surprised to see Gamma World or Star Frontiers in the next couple of years...

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Grade AAA speculation indeed!

Though it has been a while since we had one of those Modern UAs...but we can certainly keep hope alive!

 

[vecna00]

Not to add fuel to the speculation fire but Chris Tito was wearing an interesting shirt when he presented D&D News on Jan. 16...

When I saw that, two things ran through my head.

1) This is one hell of a build up with all of the possible clues they're dropping.

2) This is some damn elaborate trolling!

It's very hard to tell which is going on.

 

[Quickleaf]

I keep thinking about a Prime Material Planes supplement where in 25 pages or so six or seven Primes would be discussed.
Eberron, Athas, Oriental Adventures, Mystara, Spelljammer or Aebrynis from Birthright.

After that (120-140 pages) we could have between 30 to 40 pages of new classes, spells, rules and crunch related to eqch world.
Defilers and Templar Pacts from Dark Sun
Dragon Marks from.Eberron
Draconian variants, Knights of Solamnia paladins from Dragonlance
Ruling rules from Birthright.

I would buy such a supplement and it wouldn't be very difficult to develop. The ideas, concepts, maps and art are already there. It is just a matter of update them to 5e.
Anyway, just two weeks and a half for the announcement

Yes, people have been making similar (very good) suggestions since about the beginning of 5e. We all want to buy it, we all think it would be a great idea. For some reason WotC seems completely unwilling to listen to us.

Maybe they should straight up ask it in a survey:

"How interested would you be in a single book that provides mechanical and setting update information for multiple previous edition D&D worlds (Dragonlance, Eberron, Mystara, etc)?"

I don't know why they appear so dead set against it. Maybe it will make more sense once I've had my breakfast and am less cranky.

Chris Perkins briefly touched on that notion in the Nov. 2017 State of D&D talk... his concern (which seemed to be one based on company data) was that covering lots of things "on the surface" would ultimately be unsatisfying and potentially re-create the TSR problem of too many settings competing with one another. The concept he seemed more gung-ho about was a "one-and-done" campaign setting book for a given setting (or perhaps better described as "genre book" to emphasize accessibility to new players), being the *only* book necessary besides core 3 to run/play that setting.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

So today's episode of Dragon Talk had a "Lore You Should Know" segment on Modrons:

http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/joe-trier-how-we-roll

 

[vecna00]

Chris Perkins briefly touched on that notion in the Nov. 2017 State of D&D talk... his concern (which seemed to be one based on company data) was that covering lots of things "on the surface" would ultimately be unsatisfying and potentially re-create the TSR problem of too many settings competing with one another. The concept he seemed more gung-ho about was a "one-and-done" campaign setting book for a given setting (or perhaps better described as "genre book" to emphasize accessibility to new players), being the *only* book necessary besides core 3 to run/play that setting.

This idea is reinforced by having the DM's Guild to fill in any gaps. Which would be great for a setting like Eberron where Keith Baker would release content that would pretty much be official. I'm more than OK with this.

 

[vecna00]

So today's episode of Dragon Talk had a "Lore You Should Know" segment on Modrons:

http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/joe-trier-how-we-roll

And the sequel to that is on the Slaad!

 

[Parmandur]

I would be ok with no more SCAG-style books, but not happy. I'm inclined to believe that world material that's included in the APs would be expansions of an existing setting, not "We're releasing Dark Sun, and all the info is in this AP! It's not much, but you'll buy it anyway!" At least that's my hope, because that would make me sad.

Well, based on what they are saying, the idea of a "genre book" seems to be their direction. So instead of a SCAG style approach to Dark Sun, a gritty survival genre book with Dark Sun as the example.

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[Parmandur]

Not to add fuel to the speculation fire but Chris Tito was wearing an interesting shirt when he presented D&D News on Jan. 16...

Well, they did just come out with Torment Enhanced: but hints abound.

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